Half of a Yellow Sun

In Odenigbo, the Professor of Statistics at Nsukka University who is a main character in Adichie’s powerful novel, she gives us a mathematician who is both brilliant and flawed, both good and bad.

He is a mass of contradictions, as we all are: a fully-rounded person. Adichie’s parents were caught up in the Biafran-Nigerian civil war – the subject of this book – and her father James Nwoye Adichie was a real-life Nsukka statistician.

There’s a tell-tale gap in his research output: between 1967 and 1974 he published no papers. Call me sentimental, but when Adichie gives to Odenigbo’s lost… show more.

Wow. I was haunted by Chimamanda’s expressive writing of that Nigerian Civil War story, based on the pre-war years, the short-lived Biafra Republic, and a short time after the war. I love that she tells the hard truths in vivid pictures and lively characters. I still agonize about Kainene, one of the twin sisters swept away by the war, to death or to states a lot more like death.

In Half of a Yellow Sun, ethnic divides trigger the brutal Nigerian civil war that ravages the lives of two sisters raised in privilege. As they endure loss upon loss, their relationship evolves. When all seems lost, they find peace through forgiveness and refuge in their indestructible love for each other. I greatly admire how the author maintains a sense of intimacy against a backdrop of epic events.

Adichie’s Americanah is more famous, but I prefer Half of a Yellow Sun. The novelist brings to life the enormous debates and traumatic ruptures of 1960s Nigeria, giving a sympathetic but far from rosy view of the breakaway Republic of Biafra. The unforgettable characters and their entangled lives anchor the reader in a historical period – including Nigeria’s 1967-1970 civil war – that still haunts the country today.

The lives of two estranged, upper-class sisters play out against the Biafran war in this gripping story. It starts in the heady days before the war, when, for the primarily Igbo southerners, secession promised freedom from harsh treatment at the hands of northern Nigerians. It was chilling to realize that Adichie was leading me slowly and steadily through a descent into Hell. She describes the forced conscription of men and boys by the Biafran army, terrorism, and cruelty from the invading Nigerians, and the deliberate policy to starve the Biafrans. Readers should gird their loins – many details are hard… show more.